Caroline Ellison, who testified towards her former boyfriend and fallen crypto mogul, the founding father of FTX change, Sam Bankman-Fried, at his fraud trial, was sentenced Tuesday to 2 years in jail for her position within the case, New York prosecutors advised Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Ellison, the previous CEO of cryptocurrency agency Alameda Research, obtained a a lot lighter sentence than the utmost 110 years she confronted after pleading responsible to seven fees, together with fraud.
Her protection group had argued towards jail time. Prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office mentioned they’d not requested Judge Lewis Kaplan problem a particular sentence, as a substitute merely suggesting he take her earlier cooperation under consideration.
Ellison served as a key witness within the trial of cryptocurrency famous person Bankman-Fried – recognized by his initials “SBF” – who was sentenced to 25 years in March for one of many largest monetary fraud circumstances in historical past.
He is serving his sentence in jail and has appealed his conviction.
During her court docket testimony, Ellison accused Bankman-Fried of dipping into clients’ funds to drive his extra dangerous initiatives. He countered by trying to pin the blame on Ellison, describing her as a nasty supervisor.
A billionaire earlier than he turned 30, Bankman-Fried had been a poster boy for the cryptocurrency growth.
Within a couple of months, he had turned his small start-up FTX, first launched in 2019, into the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency buying and selling platform.
However, as uncovered by the Bankman-Fried trial, the corporate had used the property deposited into FTX to carry out riskier transactions by way of sister firm Alameda Research, in addition to buy actual property and make political donations.
FTX imploded in November 2022, reporting greater than $8 billion in debt by the point the corporate filed for chapter.
Source: www.dailysabah.com